


Open All the Windows

by hufflepirate



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Backstory, Canon Backstory, Childhood, Gen, Growing Up, Magic, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-09-29 08:42:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17200265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: Even as Jester grows older, sometimes that first spell is still the best spell. It always means the Traveler is there. It always means she isn't really alone.





	Open All the Windows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nsmorig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nsmorig/gifts).



> Merry Critmas! I hope you enjoy it!

Jester drummed her heels halfway up the wall behind her bed, sighing as she dangled her head off the other edge and looked backward at the door to her mama's room. She was _supposed_ to have gotten more paint in the latest shipment of supplies to the Lavish Chateau, but it was late and now she wasn't just out of green, she was nearly out of blue and yellow, as well. Her green wax stick was gone, too, colored down until it was too small to hold and then melted in the windowsill.

She drummed her heels again. She wasn't supposed to be loud when Mama was working, even with the thick sound-muffling curtains her mother always drew closed on the other side of the door while she had a client. It wasn't so bad when she had a new book or a project or the right colors to paint what she wanted to paint, but the only thing she _really_ wanted to draw right now required green, and nothing else seemed exciting.

She made a farting noise with her mouth, because probably that wouldn't be _too_ loud, and probably if it _was_ too loud her Mama would think it was funny anyway, probably.

She wished the Traveler would show up again. She'd seen him first outside her secret clear window up in the eaves, a green hooded figure standing stock still on the street and staring up at the building. She'd felt weirdly certain he was looking at _her_ , even though she couldn't see a face in the deep hood, and after a momentary shiver, she had felt good about it, in a way she couldn't explain.

She slid her feet down the wall, then pushed herself backward off the bed and onto her hands, sliding most of the bedspread onto the floor beside her. She wasn't _very_ good at headstands, but the rug beside her bed was soft and plush and it never hurt very much to fall on it, so she decided to try walking toward the window on her hands anyway.

The thud when she fell over was louder than she'd expected and she froze for a moment, just to be sure everything was okay.

As usual, she couldn't hear much from Mama's room, and what little she could hear didn't have anything to do with her. She pushed herself up slowly, and the faint noises didn't change at all. She breathed out heavily through her nose, and headed for the window.

The Traveler wasn't there. She wasn't really surprised. After that first time, he'd never been outside the window. He'd just shown up, in her room, when she painted a picture of him in her journal, sometimes visible and sometimes invisible, but always definitely there.

She bit her lip, looking over again at the basket she kept her paint set in. Even if she _could_ make more green, it might not be the _right_ green. Not with how little yellow and blue were left. It would be easy to mess it up. And then she couldn't draw him if she _really_ needed him.

A few weeks ago, Mama had blown hot air onto the window and drawn a heart in the fog it left behind, but when Jester tried it, there wasn't any fog. She touched the window. Warm. Like spring. That was fine when it meant Mama would let her go outside on errands with Blude, but right now, it was just another disappointment.

"What would you have drawn, child?"

The voice was calm, and slow, and familiar. Jester was grinning even before she could turn all the way to look. "You, of course!" she answered, giggling.

Sure enough, there was the Traveler, standing just behind her and then moving sideways as she turned, to stay teasingly outside her field of vision. She chased the half-sensed green at the corner of her eye until she'd spun almost all the way around and the Traveler had run out of space, standing up against the wall.

The Traveler placed a hand against the small glass pane and a thin layer of condensation appeared on it, thickening gradually until it was nearly gray and she couldn't see through the window anymore. "I was hoping you'd draw something else. Since I was already here."

Jester gasped. "You were already here?!"

The Traveler nodded, slowly. His mouth was only half visible beneath the hood, but he was smiling.

She looked sideways at him, biting her lip, then grinned again, drawing a dick into the condensation.

The Traveler chuckled, a low familiar sound she'd been sure she was imagining the last few times she'd heard it, because she hadn't been able to see him. It made her feel warm around her heart.

"You _were_ here before!" she said, "But I couldn't see you. Do I have to draw you to be able to see you? But you're here now, and I don't have any green paint!"

"You don't need to do anything to see me. You'll see me when you need to see me."

She frowned. "But what if I just _want_ to see you?"

When he didn't answer for a moment, she drew another dick on the window, hurriedly, half by instinct. He chuckled again. "Sometimes you'll see me when you only want to."

"Sometimes," she repeated, decidedly. "So not _every_ time I get bored."

"No, child. Not every time. But you are -" he paused, even longer than he usually did between words, "You are so _bright_. Chaotic. Joyful. I don't worry about you finding things to do."

She giggled. "Did you see when I opened the window and made owl noises during the day to see if people got confused? That was pretty fun. But I had to be really loud so they could hear me all the way down there, and Mama says I have to be extra quiet with the client she has today."

"Do you want to be extra quiet?"

"No," she answered, "I want to make the client go away so that Mama and I can play a game or she can tell me a story or we can maybe go downstairs to the bottom floor so we can see all the people."

Before the Traveler could answer, she added, "And I want my paints to get here faster so I can have all the colors again."

The laugh that answered was more of a snort than a chuckle, but she didn't feel too bad about it when his voice came out amused. "Well, I'm not in charge of the mail, but I may be able to help with the client."

"Really?"

His voice was warm, and she could feel the comforting heat of it in her chest. "Really. How do you want to do this?"

She bit her lip. "I don't know. I don't want Mama to know it was me, because she _likes_ her job and she wouldn't want me to mess it up, but I _do_ want to make him go away early because, you know, he's been here a long time already, really, so probably he can leave anyway and it won't be bad for Mama's job, probably."

The Traveler was quiet, but she could feel his eyes on her. For a moment, she half saw them, flashing green behind the hood, but then she thought probably she had imagined it.

"How do _you_ want to do it?" she asked.

The Traveler smiled again. "I didn't say I would get rid of him. I said I would help _you_ get rid of him."

Jester looked over at the door and then back to the Traveler. "So should I just - run in there? And hope he leaves?"

"You could."

For a moment, her heart skipped a beat and she could feel her muscles aching to _run_ , but then he continued, voice sounding a little more relaxed, "You could also talk very loud, or make a noise like thunder or a bird or an ominous whisper. You could make the whole ground shake under this building, just a little bit, to scare them. You could open all the windows and doors and let the wind blow in."

She thought through the options, biting her lip.

If she yelled, Mama would definitely know it was her. She wasn't sure how to sound like thunder, and by now, Mama would know Jester being a bird from a real bird. She might be able to make the floor shake if she and the Traveler both jumped up and down _really_ hard, but she was only little and the Traveler seemed kind of skinny under his cloak, maybe, and probably even if the floor _did_ shake a little bit, Mama and the client wouldn't notice, because when she had peeked through the door before during Mama's times with her clients, there had been a lot of moving anyway.

"I can open the windows?" she asked, "And you'll help me?"

"I will." The warmth flowed through her again, swirling inside her chest and around her heart.

She smiled. "Okay. I don't know if I can climb to the balcony or the other windows without falling down, so maybe we can make a rope out of my sheets like in that story about that girl that did that in the tower! And then you can catch me."

The Traveler put a hand on her shoulder. It was cold, which was always a surprise when his voice always made her feel so warm. "I know a better way."

She reached up instinctively to wrap her hand around his wrist. "How?"

"Thaumaturgy." When he said the word, she felt the hair rising up on the back of her neck, even as her chest filled with warmth again. Her heartbeat quickened, and she felt on edge, like the air itself was charged, pulling against her skin.

She leaned forward, almost pressing her forehead into his chest. "What's thaumaturgy?" she whispered, the word coming out like the air had begun to vibrate before her vocal chords could touch it. Everything in her was buzzing now, _everything_ , and it didn't make sense, and it didn't need to.

She heard the Traveler's grin, even though she couldn't see it. His voice was soft, as soft as her whisper had been, and instead of the usual feeling of warmth, this word pulled all the breath from her lungs. "Magic."

She breathed in again, still feeling the charge in the air, still feeling all the edges of herself and the world and the way they collided, everywhere, she and the world, and they weren't the same, and they weren't the same, and the Traveler's hand was on her shoulder, and it was cold, and it felt _real,_ felt like she could touch it and it wasn't just static electricity and the edges of things, and for a split second when his hand lifted off her shoulder she felt like she and the world _were_ the same. For a moment, it was disorienting. Then his hand twisted around to hold hers, and his other hand reached out to hold her free hand, and in the circle of their arms, everything was real and she was everything and she was herself and she thought she might be beginning to understand magic.

"We haven't done this before," he said, slow and calm and warm as ever. His voice hummed in her chest and was warm, like usual, but this time the warmth spread out from her chest, filled the air between her warm, breathing body and his, pressed against their cold, linked hands.

"You've never done it," he said, maybe a correction, maybe a second thought.

She shook her head, too overwhelmed to talk.

She _felt_ it when he smiled, felt his happiness, and she didn't know how, because she couldn't look at him and she couldn't hear him, but it was there, and he was smiling, and only after she had felt the smile did he answer. "You will."

She nodded, closing her eyes and squeezing his hands, listening to some kind of instinct she'd never known she had. "Thaumaturgy," she whispered.

In one shockingly fast motion, the Traveler released her hands and pulled her up against him, wrapping his arms around her, and her brain couldn't keep up, but she knew the warmth between them had become the warmth around them, knew he'd pulled her into the middle of it, knew she needed it to do the magic.

His whisper sounded like it was inside her ear, rather than outside it. "Use the magic. Push it out 30 feet. Open the windows next door."

Her hands were trapped in fabric, in too much cloak and not enough person, comfortable and safe and more pointless than useless, because she didn't feel afraid, and she pushed outward with something else, instead. Something like her heart. Something that wasn't her heart, but was a whole new sense she'd never used before, that felt the warmth and moved it. The sense of warmth expanded and she could feel that it was in the room with her and the Traveler, and then she could feel that it was in her Mama's room, too, and then she felt it reach the window, and felt it reach the doors to the balcony, and she knew, all of a sudden, in a way she couldn't explain, that the other window was too far, and she tried to push it open anyway.

In an instant, all the magic was gone. The warmth. The cloak. The Traveler.

She thrust her hands out in front of her, feeling for him.

She whirled around to look behind her, like he might just be hiding from her again, another game.

She hurried to the window, hoping maybe he was where she'd seen him first.

He was floating in the air, and the fraction of his face she could see was smiling big, big, big as he looked at the side of the inn, and an answering smile pulled at the edge of her mouth so hard she couldn't even wonder how he was flying.

She closed her eyes again, trying to find the warmth. It was there, when she thought about it.

The Traveler chuckled behind her ear, where she couldn't see him even if she opened her eyes, where he couldn't be anyway, because he was outside the window, and she smiled even wider.

"I'll leave you to try it. You're going to do great things."

She didn't know if pushing the warmth down into the floor and shaking their rooms helped. She didn't know if the Traveler was still there when her eyes were closed. She just knew that the floor shook, and that when she opened her eyes, he had disappeared from view. She just knew her mama's client left quickly, and her mama came for her so fast she didn't even have time to finish looking for him.

 

******

 

Jester skipped out into the sunshine. Now that she was 13, even Mama admitted she was old enough to run errands for herself, as long as Blude went with her.

"Okay," she said, "So we have to make three stops, okay? I want a present for Mama for her birthday, so we have to go someplace nice to get that, like that jewelry shop that she got all those boxes from last year, and I want to get some new books, just one or two, and I need more ink for my sketchbook, in lots of colors if we can get it, so actually, I think that is also the bookshop, right? Maybe it's two stops."

Blude walked beside her, his long legs keeping up even as she hustled along. "If we go to the right one, it's two stops. If we go to a different bookstore, we can go to the arcane shop for ink and it's three."

"Ooh, ar _cane_ " she said thoughtfully.

Blude laughed, a familiar deep chuckle. "Three stops, then."

She grinned back.

It was too nice being outside to ruin it with tricks right off the bat. She was well-behaved in the jewelry store, picking out a pretty necklace for her mama that Blude paid for out of mama's account, and even better behaved in the book store, where Blude followed behind her, offering commentary on the books she was considering, because he so often got roped into reading out loud to her even though she was big now.

By the time they pushed open the door to the arcane shop, Jester could feel the desire to let loose buzzing at the back of her head. The Traveler always liked it when she could come up with some kind of chaos, and while she couldn't be _sure_ he was here, something about the intensity of the buzz, and its single point of focus on the back of her neck, made her feel like he was right behind her, watching.

Blude went up to the counter to ask about some kind of warding amulet Mama wanted, and Jester took the opportunity to skitter backward into a hidden corner, examining the things on the shelves.

She glanced over her shoulder as she reached a curio cabinet with rows of potions behind its locked glass doors. The wizard who ran the shop was looking down, getting things out of the case in front of him. Good.

She studied the lock. Thaumaturgy didn't work on things that were locked, but this was an awfully flimsy lock. Probably even _she_ could have picked it, if she had a hairpin today. And thaumaturgy _did_ open windows and doors awfully hard. Maybe it would work anyway!

"Traveler, are you there?" she whispered, placing her hands in front of the cabinet doors to catch them if they opened. A familiar warmth started around her heart, like it always did when she thought about a specific spell, and she decided to take it as a yes. "Thaumaturgy," she whispered.

The warmth spread out, filling her body and then bursting out around her, but the doors didn't open. They rattled in place and then began _wailing_ with an alarm spell.

"Hey!"

The second she heard the wizard shout, she bolted toward the nearest door, the one into his back room. He started saying something else, something she didn't understand, and for a moment she could feel her muscles stiffening, but she thought about the Traveler and kept running and the stiffness faded.

"Thaumaturgy!" The door to the back room slammed open and she burst through it, taking stock of the space as quickly as she could.

"Thaumaturgy!" She shoved the feeling of warmth toward the small window that faced the street. It slammed open.

She kept running, hoping the window wasn't too high or too small to jump through. It looked like she could probably make it. Probably. But it would be a close thing. There were noises behind her. She sped up. Then she jumped.

For a moment, she could just swear there were hands under her left foot, helping her push off and make the leap.

She toppled out the window and caught herself with a roll, stinging her wrist just a little but otherwise not hurting herself. "Sorry, Traveler!" she said, "I tried to mix the potions together!"

There wasn't an answer, because he wasn't there, really, but as she found a hidden alleyway nearby to wait for Blude, she decided there was a difference between not there and _not there_ , and just because he hadn't spoken didn't mean things weren't still alright.

 

******

 

Jester sat on the bed with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms around her legs. It was strange being in an inn that wasn't her own. It was strange being alone after dark, without Mama and without Blude and without anyone. She knew this inn had a good reputation, and she knew Mama had sent her here because she knew the proprietor, and she knew she couldn't go home after what had happened today, but none of that stopped the ache in her chest.

It turned out, there was a reason Mama never left home. It turned out, being away from home _hurt_.

She pulled in tighter, hoping it would make the ache around her heart go away.

For a moment, she wanted to call out to the Traveler, to ask why things were so bad all of a sudden, but she didn't. She knew her tricks didn't always work out. That had always been true, and it had always been part of the fun, but now that things had backfired _so_ hard, it wasn't so fun anymore.

She looked over at her sketchbook, sitting on the small table under one of the windows, and thought about drawing Lord Robert Something on the balcony, or the inn where she was staying now, or a picture of her new horse and carriage, but then she'd have to figure out what to tell the Traveler about all of it, and what she wanted to say was that it _hurt_ , and she didn't know how to say that.

She heard him before she felt his presence, but two words in, his cool breath was ghosting against the side of her face, and then there he was. "No pictures today, Jester?"

"Sorry, Traveler," she answered, "I didn't want to be like a sore loser tonight, so I was going to draw things in the morning."

She wasn't sure that was the truth. It might have been the truth, if she'd thought that far ahead.

The Traveler chuckled like he knew everything she hadn't said, on top of everything she had. "What game did you lose?"

When he put it that way, she wasn't so sure, because nothing felt like a game, just now. "I played a joke," she said after a moment, "But nobody thought it was funny."

The Traveler smiled, just visible under his hood. "I thought it was funny."

She felt a smile pull at her lips in spite of herself. "I did too!"

With the memory of the moment before it all went wrong came a warmth in her chest that meant the Traveler was doing _something_ with magic. She focused harder on the memory of slipping back off the balcony and locking the door and watching Lord Whatsit realize he was trapped and laughing, and it gave her the energy to uncurl and get up off the bed.

"I think I'm going to at least draw _that_ part," she said, stepping over to the small desk and, after a moment's pause, grabbing the sketchbook and her ink and moving back to the bed.

She sat sideways again, next to the Traveler's hooded form, and drew so that he could see, trying to think of other not-so-sad things to talk to him about. "Did you see my new horse?" she asked, "It's so pretty!"

"It is."

The first strokes of the drawing were one thing, and she was as focused on the Traveler as on the picture, but the longer she drew, and the more she had to focus on the details, the more she got absorbed into her drawing, losing track of the room and the strangeness of being away from home and even the presence of the Traveler next to her.

When she looked up from the completed picture, he was gone.

"Traveler?"

He didn't answer. She looked back down. The same page had an old drawing of him, and she thought for a minute that the smile on the drawing wasn't the one she'd drawn.

"Did you want to look at the picture?" she asked.

Still no answer.

"I guess you saw it."

She started feeling cold again, and alone. She blew on the ink to dry it and then closed the sketchbook, getting up to put it back on the table.

Maybe the Traveler was outside the window, like he used to be sometimes when she was very little.

He wasn't.

"Well, thanks for cheering me up, anyway!" she said, trying to pretend he was there and trying to pretend the cheering up had worked instead of starting to fade already.

There was a puff of air on the back of her neck, like a swift burst of laughter, but then it was gone, and when she turned, there was no Traveler.

Well, she'd just have to finish cheering up all by herself.

She felt for her magic - for _their_ magic, maybe, but more hers every day and more hers every time the Traveler taught her something new - and there it was, the warmth starting up in her heart, and then she did the only thing she could think of to do and whispered "thaumaturgy" to open up the window.

It slammed open with the usual familiar bang, and she smiled faintly. At least there was still that.

Before she went to sleep, she rearranged all the furniture in the room to put the bed under the window, where she'd remember it was open if she woke up in the middle of the night. And anyway, maybe when she left tomorrow, it would confuse the innkeeper to have the whole room flipped completely.

 

******

 

The moment the cat leapt up from beneath the table, appearing out of nowhere, Jester felt a warmth welling up inside her. Every time she saw new magic, she wondered if the Traveler could teach it to her, and every day seemed to have something new in it, now that she'd been away from home so long, and every night she had more new pictures to draw, new things like magic cats and strange little green girls, and not just pictures of her mama.

As the little goblin girl kept talking about all the magic Caleb could do, it seemed like as good a time as any to show off - and to reassure the Traveler that she was still thinking about the things she could draw him.

"I can do things too!" she said.

"With magic?"

"Yeah!"

"Like what?" The goblin girl looked interested, but before Jester could start doing anything, before she could even get the words out to propose an idea, Nott was backtracking. "Not to me! Not to me!"

She looked scared, even under the creepy mask. That was no good. Jester was already thinking about magic, so the warmth in her chest was already there and already spreading, and in a split second, she made her decision - she'd do the safest, coolest, most reassuring magic she knew.

"Thaumaturgy!" she shouted, flinging her arms out and shoving the warmth outward into its 30-foot radius. The windows slammed open, a breeze blowing in, and she smiled as Nott's eyes lit up.

Then she had everyone's attention in the place, and that wasn't as comfortable as it would have been at home before - before, and Nott looked nervous again and Fjord was telling her off, but she didn't let the smile fade, because this was _her_ magic.

She'd learned a little since she got out into the world. She'd learned a little about playing it cool, about low profiles, about slipping away from consequences.

But her chest was still warm, and she still had a good feeling about these weird smelly people, one she couldn't explain, and she closed the windows back with thaumaturgy, just to make a point.


End file.
